“People are getting worse,” the old man said. “The younger generations especially. They have no respect for rules or values. Our country is in big trouble.”

            Chances are, you’ve heard someone — often someone up in years — render an opinion like that about the current state of affairs.

            But is it true? Is human nature that much different than it was when that older person was young? Are people really getting worse?

            If you study history, you discover that in every generation, some people have done terrible things to other people. In every time period, the population appears to have a mix of people — some with high values and some with low values, and some seemingly with none at all. Every age includes people who are altruistic and people who are self-centered. What’s more, in every period for which we have any kind of records, it seems that these good-bad characteristics appear mixed up within individuals. There are people who seem basically good but who at some point do some terrible things. And vice versa.

            It is true, of course, that with every advance of technology, we discover new ways to do right and wrong. Further, with modern media, we hear about a lot of things that we didn’t hear about as easily or as often in earlier times, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t happen.

            So it’s probably not true that people are worse now than they were in earlier generations, but they’re not much better either. In reality, ever since our first parents were expelled from the Garden of Eden, human nature has been in need of restoration.

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